Nolan playing it cool because he feels heat

Ray Ratto

Published
4:00 am PST, Tuesday, October 31, 2006

San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan yells in the fourth quarter. San Diego Chargers play the San Francisco Niners at Monster Park in San Francisco on Oct. 15, 2006. Liz Mangelsdorf /The Chronicle Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-31-2006 Ran on: 10-31-2006 less

San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan yells in the fourth quarter. San Diego Chargers play the San Francisco Niners at Monster Park in San Francisco on Oct. 15, 2006. Liz Mangelsdorf /The Chronicle Ran on: ... more

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf

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San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan yells in the fourth quarter. San Diego Chargers play the San Francisco Niners at Monster Park in San Francisco on Oct. 15, 2006. Liz Mangelsdorf /The Chronicle Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-16-2006
LaDainian Tomlinson goes up, up and away to give the Chargers a 35-19 lead just before halftime, while Niners running back Frank Gore (top left) is feeling low, low, low.
Ran on: 10-31-2006 Ran on: 10-31-2006 less

San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan yells in the fourth quarter. San Diego Chargers play the San Francisco Niners at Monster Park in San Francisco on Oct. 15, 2006. Liz Mangelsdorf /The Chronicle Ran on: ... more

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf

Nolan playing it cool because he feels heat

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Times are hard at 49ers World Headquarters, and they should be. Taking hideous beatings has become all too familiar in the past year and a half, and head coach/football-department czar Mike Nolan knows that whatever the natives are, they have long passed restless.

Sunday's pants-to-the-ankles performance in Chicago was only the latest hyper-stinker, and if Nolan cited the five turnovers once in his Monday guilty plea, he cited them six times. It was as if the 49ers' biggest issue is going places without the ball.

Well, we know that can't be it, because even our lying eyes don't deceive us that badly. The number of ways in which the 49ers aren't good are comparable to the number of ways in which they weren't good last year.

So why isn't this simply another tedious episode of Groundhog's Day? Because Nolan all but admitted Monday that the heat is getting to be an issue, and we suspect that it's not all external.

He went out of his way Monday to say that the team's problems now are on the field, that last year was devoted to fixing the franchise's structural problems. He cited the hiring of player personnel man Scot McCloughan, football-ops man Lal Heneghan and even communications director Lisa Lang as proof that his side of the building is fine.

Well, OK, if he says so, although Lang's principal job as the Yorks' stadium schmoozer at City Hall apparently is going about as well as the campaign to move City Hall next to Candlestick Park.

The fact is, Nolan is feeling a tightness around the collar because there is little visual evidence that this team is getting better, not even the evidence he cited Monday that the 49ers' record is better than it was a year ago at the same time. In fact, it isn't; they were 2-5 then, and they're 2-5 now. They're getting crushed as often as ever, the defense is persistently overmatched, and the offense works only if the 49ers get an early lead and can run the ball three times for every pass.

The fans are restless, because they thought the four-year reclamation project for this cesspool would be at least a quarter of the way done in a year and a half.

But, to be frank, it isn't the fans who might worry Nolan. It's the front office -- more precisely, John York. He, too, surely thought there would be more progress than this when he wrested the franchise from Terry Donahue's clumsy and half-hearted ministrations, and given the concerns that he had given too much power to a relative newcomer, he might be having a bout with seller's remorse.

York hasn't said anything publicly, having learned the danger of popping his head out during whacking season, but he cannot be happy that since turning over the franchise to Nolan, the team is entertaining more empty seats, competence is suddenly being made an issue, and, well, you can't pretty up a 6-17 record.

This is why Nolan came out making such a spirited defense of the Nolan Administration on Monday, explaining how half the work has been done -- the half you ticket buyers don't see. He made it clear that having cleaned out the old brush and trash and reconditioned the back 40 and fertilized, now comes the planting, and then at some undefined future point, the reaping.

And it's the fact that he felt the need to make all that clear that makes a person wonder if he feels a little pressure from the one place he would find it difficult to resist -- from above. Nolan has been criticized for filling his plate to overflowing (and York for letting him do so), but as long as he could show progress toward the goal of not being part of the NFC's Pioneer League 3 (with Detroit and Green Bay), that wasn't an issue.

It is now. In fact, it is enough of an issue that some folks are suggesting that if the improvement isn't there in triplicate next year, "There will be someone else talking to you," Nolan said.

That would make sense. York is not a patient man when it comes to looking like a fool, and having experienced that with Donahue, doing so again would not be tolerated quite so blithely. So yes, Nolan is on the path to trouble, one that could include more layers of corporate insulation above him before next year, and a ticket to the NFL Network in Year 4.

All because the 49ers can't stay close often enough. Only Tennessee and Buffalo come close on the rout chart, and if you can't win and can't fool people into thinking you could have won, then what exactly is the point?

Nolan senses this, which is why he made such a case for himself Monday. It isn't often that a man uses a bad turnover ratio as a shield, but Nolan uses what tools are presented him. He is playing for needed time just when the audience is starting to look at its watches, bad signs all around.

On the other hand, it takes only a couple of weeks to be cured in this short-attention span world of ours, so Nolan has some time to save himself. Maybe staple-gunning the ball to his men's hands is the way to go.